Chancey Charm Houston Vendor Highlight | Flora & Fauna

In today’s Chancey Charm Houston Wedding Vendor Highlight, Wedding Planner Skylar Caitlin is chatting with Lauren Garza of Flora & Fauna! This Houston wedding florist combines traditional design principals with non-traditional floral concepts to create whatever her brides fancy (even if it’s casual). We’re excited to be chatting with her about how she became a wedding florist, tips for brides + some of her beautiful creations below. Enjoy friends!

– The Chancey Charm Team

Photo: Annie McArdle

Name

Lauren Garza of Flora & Fauna

Hometown

Montgomery, Texas

What’s your area of expertise?

Floral Design

First job you ever landed

The first job I landed was an intimate 30th birthday dinner party at a charming, rustic-chic restaurant in Houston. The birthday girl is a flower lover, so her husband secretly hired me to create something beautiful for the long, wooden farm table where the meal would be enjoyed. I was inspired by the venue’s fresh, farm-to-table approach which was reflected in lush arrangements of kale, berries, fruits, garden roses, a variety of seasonal blooms, and greenery running the length of the table. The birthday girl was thrilled and so was I! Her reaction was so fulfilling it; was a huge factor in giving me the courage to leave my 9 to 5 and pursue floral design full time.

What brought you to the wedding industry?

After planning my own wedding, I fell hard for floral design. I’ve always had a love for nature (I grew up on a 100 acre horse farm) and a devotion to design (I’ve earned a Master’s Degree in Advertising & Art Direction from UT Austin and spent 5 years at a large NYC ad agency as an Art Director), so I was naturally attracted to this medium.

I started floral design as a hobby doing small parties for friends, but as my gigs grew larger, so did my desire pursue it as a career. With the encouragement of my awesome husband and amazing family and friends, I decided to say goodbye to my 9 to 5 and opened up Flora & Fauna in late 2015.

Photo: Annie McArdle

A lesson you’ve learned the hard way in the wedding industry

Dinnerplate Cafe au Lait Dahlias and the Texas heat do not mix well, which taught me to always have a backup plan when working with finicky materials.

Favorite way to spend a Sunday afternoon

Sunday surprises! My husband and I get get together with a group of friends and the group plans a surprise afternoon outing. The catch is that one person has no idea what the day has in store. Everyone gets really into it and tries to outdo each other by finding the perfect surprise for the unsuspecting surprisee. It’s a great way to explore your city and get out of your comfort zone. Plus, it gave me an excuse to eat the largest pizza in Texas.

Best piece of advice to someone new to the industry

Reach out to other wedding professionals in your area whose work you admire! Houston has a fabulous community of florists who welcomed Flora & Fauna with open arms. It’s great to have a community for support, education, or just to grab a drink and talk shop.

Best piece of planning advice to a new bride/groom

Don’t sweat the small stuff. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by all of the details, so trust in your vendors. You chose them for a reason, so lean on them and give them some room to create.

Photo: Courtney Leigh Photo

Some words you live by

Stay sexy, don’t get murdered. #murderino

Best tip for balancing work + home life

Designate a cut off time for returning calls and answering emails. I have a hard time sticking to this, but it’s important for me to make sure I have some quality time with my husband and pups every night.

Best moment of your career

Walking away from my advertising career to pursue florals full time.

Guilty pleasures

I’m a firm believer in not having guilty pleasures! Relax and let yourself enjoy those little “vices” that make you happy. That being said, The Bachelor. I can’t help but feel guilty about wasting an hour or two of my life every time I watch that show.

It truly depends on the couple! Weddings are a day celebrating the couple’s love, so I believe the party should reflect them. Personally, I’m all Par-tay. Nothing makes me happier than great food, good drinks, and dancing the night away with all of my family and friends.

Chancey Charm

We’re the Chancey Charm team, and from San Diego to Boston — and everywhere in between — we come alongside brides and take the stress out of planning!

Serving clients since 2011, with over 150 published weddings and editorials under our brand, we love serving clients with custom design boards and inspirational sketches. Chancey Charm planners work from offices in more than 13 cities, meticulously designing feminine, sophisticated weddings.

Each location is served by local planners, ensuring excellent customer service for every Chancey Charm client. We have access to multiple mentors + a team of planners to help with sourcing and problem solving, as we plan your wedding. We also have back-end business support behind us, so that we can focus on planning your wedding, without having to worry about marketing and PR simultaneously.

We lean on cloud-based planning and our custom, online planning tools to meet our brides where they are: from hometown to destination affairs, let’s make planning a stress-free process. Whether it’s a small, intimate vineyard wedding or a grand ballroom celebration, we want you to head down the aisle at ease as the belle of the ball in your elegant, publication-ready vision.

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Welcome to Chancey Charm! We're a team of experienced wedding planners, in destination wedding locations across the country. With over 150 published weddings and editorials under our brand, we've been serving clients with custom design boards and inspirational sketches since 2011. We've been named a top planner by Southern Living Magazine and featured on Martha Stewart.